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Father-son road trips can be powerful and life-changing. But
while most excursions wind up at Cooperstown or the Grand Canyon,
Robbie Whitten's yearlong odyssey with his dad ended with him
behind the counter of a pawn shop--and eventually, at the helm of
an empire.

In 1979 the billionaire Hunt brothers were working to corner the
market on silver, ultimately driving up the price from $11 per
ounce to almost $50 per ounce. That was when Robbie, then 18, and
his father, Robert, hit the road, setting up booths in hotel
lobbies around the South, buying unwanted gold and silver jewelry
and selling it to a smelter. It turned out to be a genius
business, and by the end of the year they had 30 teams of buyers
crisscrossing the country.

But when the market collapsed a year later, the Whittens found
themselves with a warehouse full of jewelry in Columbus, Ga. "We
ended up with really nice pieces that were too pretty to melt
down, so we bought some showcases," Robbie Whitten remembers. "We
decided we didn't want to be in the retail jewelry business, so
we said, 'Let's try a pawn shop.' Thirty-three years later, that
original location is still going strong, and we've expanded."

The younger Whitten now has seven Money Mizer franchise locations in
Georgia, Florida and Alabama; he's preparing to open five more
this year, and eight to 10 per year after that. He let us
behind the counter to learn how he has built his business.

How do you deal with the seedy reputation of the pawn
business?
We've been fighting negative images for years. Pawn shops can be
kind of shady, but the reality TV shows have been a big boost to
the industry and its reputation. Now a lot of mom-and-pop shops
are cleaning up their stores to take advantage of the interest.

There are a lot of new customers coming in who say they've never
been in a pawn shop and want to check it out. We don't want them
to feel like they're in a pawn shop. On one side we want them to
think they're in a fine jewelry store, and in the sporting goods
section we want them to think they're in a Bass Pro shop, with a
department store in between.

What sets Money Mizer apart?
Our stores are different from about 95 percent of pawn shops.
We're almost like a retail store, and a lot more
customer-friendly--and we're on the good side of town. Our
employees don't have long hair or tattoos running down their
arms. We attract more of a white-collar clientele.

Are the upscale customers buying or
pawning?
Our loans have definitely increased to the white-collar side.
There are lots of guys, like real-estate agents, who were making
six figures that are now living on 40 grand. They can't borrow
$3,000 or $4,000 from the bank anymore--they just don't make
those types of personal loans. The term we like to use in the
industry is "underbanked." But these people have lots of nice
tangible assets. They might have a Rolex or a $500 Ping driver
they can sell.

But people like to shop here, too. Recently we had a lawyer come
in and buy a flawless 2-carat diamond from us. Then he took it to
a jeweler and had it put in a mounting. We could have done the
exact same thing for less, but he said he didn't want his fiancée
to know the diamond came from a pawn shop!

You've started an online business, too. How does that
work?
PawnConfidential.com is more for the country-club set who don't
want to be seen going into a pawn shop. They take a picture of
their merchandise and send it to us via our website with a brief
description and how much they want to sell or pawn it for. Our
appraisers look at it, and if they agree to the terms, we
transfer the money to [the customer's] checking account. Once
they pay off their loan, we FedEx the merchandise back to them.
We're targeting loans in the $500-plus category; in our
brick-and-mortar stores, the average loan is $150.